Page:The Life of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1.djvu/63

Rh, and a trifle of suppression with respect to matters which he thought unworthy of his fame. Otherwise, he is quite transparent after his own fashion—the fashion, that is to say, of the sixteenth century, when swaggering and lawlessness were in vogue, which must be distinguished from the fashion of the nineteenth century, when modesty and order are respectable.

What I have called the accent and the intonation of Cellini strikes genuinely upon my ear in the opening sentences of a letter to Benedetto Varchi. It should be premised that this distinguished historian, poet, and critic was an intimate friend of the great artist, who sent him his autobiography in MS. to read. "It gives me pleasure to hear from your worship," writes Cellini, "that you like the simple narrative of my life in its present rude condition better than if it were filed and retouched by the hand of others, in which case the exact accuracy with which I have set all things down might not be so apparent as it is. In truth, I have been careful to relate nothing whereof I had a doubtful memory, and have confined myself to the strictest truth, omitting numbers of extraordinary incidents out of which another writer would have made great capital." In a second letter to Varchi he declares himself as "bad at dictating, and worse at composing," He clearly thought that his imperfect grammar and plebeian style were more than compensated by the sincerity and veracity of his narration.